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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847562">every feeling you haven't realized</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentiallly/pseuds/tangentiallly'>tangentiallly</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/F, F/M, Obliviousness, Pining, Pre-Canon, mostly josephine centric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:34:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,799</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847562</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentiallly/pseuds/tangentiallly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>a story of how josephine grows to have feelings for two very different people, but she doesn't know yet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Frank Denouement/Josephine Anwhistle, Josephine Anwhistle/Olivia Caliban</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>every feeling you haven't realized</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>disclaimer: i don't own asoue</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>She first noticed him -<em> really </em> noticed him - when she was nineteen, and him eighteen, and he’s frowning as their group of friends egged each other on about breaking into a chaperone’s house for a bet. A frown distinctively different from his brother’s amused expression a few feet away. His brother, who’s occasionally joining in Beatrice and Olaf’s increasingly intense conversation with rising stakes about the bet, and occasionally leaning over to whisper a few words into Bertrand’s ears. She noticed Kit narrowed her eyes a bit every time the latter happened.</p><p>He’s different, though. The wary frown, the look of disapproval. The firm, cool refusal to participate even as Beatrice smiled her most brilliant smiles at him. Very pretty and very brilliant, Josephine thought. Josephine could understand why people less careful than herself would be easily roped into anything when Beatrice smiled like that. So it was interesting to notice one of the Denouement brothers seem utterly unmoved, and tired of the senseless shenanigans.</p><p><em> So he’s the sensible one </em> , she thought. <em> The careful one who knew to evaluate risks </em>.</p><p>Josephine made a note about this in her head.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Josephine asked Bertrand later which brother he had been talking to that day, and he smiled a bashful smile and hesitated and Josephine wondered if she’d crossed any invisible line by asking this, and if he didn’t actually know and was embarrassed to admit it, or something of that sort. She hurried to say he didn’t need to answer this if he didn’t want to, and he let her change the topic to something else.</p><p>So she still didn’t figure out which brother that had been.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Their initials were F and E, that she knew. She’d heard the others referred to them. It wasn’t until she heard Beatrice mention the name Frank that she’d started suspecting that was one of their names.</p><p>Later, when she’d been helping Olivia filing mission reports, she saw the name Frank again. </p><p>Josephine wasn’t sure how Olivia had gotten assigned so many reports to comb through that seemed to take up all her time. She suspected it had to do with Olivia not really knowing how to say no when additional work got piled onto her. Olivia, with her meekness and a heart that tried to help everyone. Josephine had tried to talk to her about it before, but without much success, and so she ended up trying to help by helping her with those reports.</p><p>And since she was already helping with the mission reports filing, she couldn’t resist reading through some of them and commenting on their grammatical mistakes. If she had to do this, might as well make it fun. </p><p>Filing those reports and reading them out loud and giggling over grammar mistakes in Olivia’s apartment in the city became one of their favorite pastimes. Olivia would make tea and Josephine would bring over cookies and then they would sit side by side at Olivia’s kitchen table, and Josephine would make remarks on things such as the Snickets and their rhetorical devices, and Olivia would laugh - a easy, carefree laugh that Josephine would only see when the two of them were alone.</p><p>Each volunteer had their own writing style when it came to writing reports. Sometimes Josephine and Olivia liked to play some games and guessed who wrote which report as one of them read it. Jacques was very particular to repetition, Georgina and Bertrand were prone to use big words, and Beatrice was one of the best storytellers, and it wasn’t always easy to tell if what she wrote was some kind of exaggeration or not, because knowing Beatrice, she could’ve easily done those things too.</p><p>And then came Frank’s report.</p><p>“I think it’s the first time I read one of his,” Josephine told Olivia.</p><p>“I suppose he doesn’t get to go on missions often, running a hotel and all that,” Olivia replied, leaning a bit closer to Josephine to take a good look at the report. Her arm lightly bumped into Josephine’s as she angled herself closer. Josephine wasn’t a very physical person, but she found herself not minding this.</p><p>As she read through the very meticulously written report and the decisions that had been made during the mission, she suddenly had a strong feeling that Frank was indeed the brother that had caught her attention that day with his sharp frown, when she’d labelled him as the cautious one in her mind. This read like a report written by a careful person who made careful decisions.</p><p>“Hey,” Olivia whispered conspiratorially, “have you heard they’re actually triplets?”</p><p>Josephine looked up in surprise.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Later, when they went out for a stroll after staying inside all afternoon sorting through reports, Olivia told Josephine more about the rumors of the secret triplet she’d been hearing recently. Josephine was intrigued, but she was also skeptical. </p><p>“Are you sure it’s not just a story they made up for fun? I’ve always just seen two of them, ever.”</p><p>Olivia shrugged. “Could be. But if it’s really made up for fun, you’d think this would be more widespread, wouldn’t it?”</p><p>She had a point.</p><p>“Perhaps you’re onto something here,” Josephine said thoughtfully, “have you ever read any report that mentioned any of this?”</p><p>“Not really,” Olivia admitted. “All I’ve heard are whispers, never any evidence on paper.”</p><p>“Just because something is on paper, that doesn’t necessarily make it evidence,” Josephine felt the need to point out.</p><p>Olivia laughed. “You’re sounding like Snicket a bit there. Lemony, I mean.”</p><p>“I’m fairly sure he has said something similar before.”</p><p>They both laughed.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The thing with Olivia was that Josephine knew Olivia, unlike herself, was not great at saying no. She tried to help others, regardless of the potential risk it might bring to herself. Josephine was not like that - she was very careful about what she said yes to. Some people thought she was too careful about it - she wasn’t unaware of those people’s thoughts.</p><p>To Josephine, it was quite straightforward a conclusion to come to (as straightforward as the basic grammar rules), that if Olivia wasn’t really putting herself first, then someone else ought to.</p><p>She would be that someone.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Frank had met all sorts of different guests with all sorts of different requests. Some tried to order things that weren’t on the menu for breakfast to be sent to their rooms, some demanded the hotel staff cater to extremely specific requests for their parties, some only willing to stay at rooms with the innest decorations. And then there were also the Beatrice fans, hearing the famous actress would be staying, and requested to stay at rooms near her room.</p><p>He didn’t usually come across guests who asked too many questions about the safety and all the security measures of the rooms. He also didn’t expect that a volunteer from the organization could be one of those people.</p><p>In retrospect, perhaps it made sense. They were a secret organization, after all. One couldn’t be too careful. He thought he had probably gotten too accustomed to his usual group of volunteer friends staying here and them knowing all the details of how each secret door worked, that he’d forgotten not every volunteer was familiar with those. Some won’t ask too deep about it, preferring to find things out themselves, solve every little problem themselves, decode all the mysteries themselves. Which wasn’t surprising - they were all trained to be used to not receiving every answer. It’s what the apprenticeship was about. Others simply didn’t worry too much about security when staying at a volunteer-run hotel.</p><p>Josephine was different. She asked very detailed questions about the safety measures and the escape routes, and about how old the electrical appliances in the room were. She asked whether it would be possible for potential enemies to spy on her room from a different room. She asked for a map of the hotel, which she scrutinized carefully after he gave her one. Sometimes her questions felt like someone who was just mindlessly worrying, but sometimes the questions were surprisingly shrewd, like she’d done her research on it quite a bit already. </p><p>Frank had heard about Josephine from his friends occasionally, and the impression he’d gathered was that she worried about every small thing. After talking with her, though, he had the feeling that she was more than that. The questions she asked annoyed him at first, but they were also too shrewd in a way that made him feel like she was - testing him, perhaps.</p><p>And after all, the woman who worried too much about everything was an easy persona to play. Not saying she wasn’t naturally more careful than everyone else, but he had the odd feeling that sometimes she knew how to play that persona up a little more.</p><p>“I mean, who <em> isn’t </em> playing some kind of role?” Bertrand remarked when Frank told him about this.</p><p>Of course he would say that. “You’re the expert on this, I’m sure,” Frank said drily.</p><p>“I won’t claim to be an expert,” he laughed. He looked at Frank curiously. “You’re fascinated by her, aren’t you?”</p><p>“Fascinated is a strong word,” Frank rolled his eyes. Although not a <em> wrong </em> one, perhaps, but he wasn’t going to tell Bertrand that. He’d heard the way Kit and Bertrand dissect gossips while they’re driving in that taxi, and he’s not keen to become their next topic.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Having a conversation with Frank Denouement in person proved that he was actually as detail oriented and meticulous as his mission reports and Josephine’s impression of him from a while ago suggested. Her questions were deliberately specific, but he had answered all of those with a professional ease. </p><p>She wouldn’t say she was super impressed or anything, but she would admit that she liked his competency.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Olivia acted a little weird, a little unprecedentedly distant, for a couple of days after Josephine’s hotel stay. It wasn’t anything obvious, because Olivia was naturally non confrontational, but Josephine knew Olivia well enough by now to tell that something was wrong. She wanted to just ask her, but she knew how much Olivia could stress over a conversation like this, so in the end she decided to just observe a few more days, perhaps give her a little space.</p><p>Olivia’s weirdness disappeared - or she hid it better, maybe - after Josephine brought up the map she had acquired from Frank. They looked the map over - it was the version they gave to volunteers, not guests - and read all the labels of which rooms are for what. It looked like it was organized to a library system. Could one of the rooms be intentionally mislabeled, and behind the doors actually hid a third brother?</p><p>It was not impossible, they supposed. On the other hand, there was a risk with doing so. If any volunteer was interested in one of the topics and decided to check out the room, then what was behind the doors of that room would be revealed. Granted, the chances weren’t high, there were a thousand rooms after all, but surely the chance was there. And with so many volunteers visiting, the secret was bound to spill out eventually, if it was there.</p><p>“Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question,” Olivia said.</p><p>“Now you’re the one sounding like Snicket,” Josephine teased. The previous awkwardness and distance from Olivia evaporated, and they dissolved into easy laughter. Olivia leaned against Josephine’s shoulder a bit, Josephine could feel Olivia’s hair ticking her arm.</p><p>It was a rather nice feeling.</p><p>“It’s <em> too </em> detailedly labelled,” Olivia said after the laughter died down a bit.</p><p>“Frank is a quite detailed person,” Josephine said without thinking.</p><p>Olivia frowned a bit, and Josephine felt something in the atmosphere shifted again, but she couldn’t exactly pinpoint what was wrong. “He also has to run a whole hotel. With Ernest, of course, but with his - more questionable involvements that I’ve been hearing - I don’t know how much help he actually offered. This labelling and organizing of which topics belonged in which room - it required a lot of work.”</p><p>Josephine tried to piece all these together in her head. “What did you say the name of the rumored secret third brother is?”</p><p>“Dewey.”</p><p>“Like, Dewey as in <em> Dewey Decimal System </em>?” Josephine asked slowly.</p><p>“It’s a little too coincidental, isn’t it?”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“You’ve been off lately,” Kit said one day, and Frank’s attention snapped back to his surroundings. She looked very amused in a way that made him narrow his eyes at her. “Thinking about a certain J.S.?” She asked.</p><p>He was fairly certain this was Bertrand’s fault that she was asking this. Frank regained his composure fairly quickly, and asked in the most indifferent tone he could manage, “Are you referring to your brother, or that rich gentleman he’s been paying attention to?”</p><p>“Neither, and you know it,” she said in amusement. “But good to see you pretending that you don’t know, it’s giving me so much more insight into this situation. See you later, Frank, I think B owes me a few dollars.”</p><p>He scowled. “You two are the worst.”</p><p>She just laughed.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Josephine didn’t tell Olivia in advance about her next visit to the hotel. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but her instincts and her memories from Olivia acting a little distant after her last visit both warned her against it, and Josephine liked to be careful. Plus, she might not even find out anything about the secret third brother, best not to get Olivia’s hopes up.</p><p>She decided to start slow. Ask Frank a few questions about the hotel, about the map, about how it was all organized. If he was baffled or alarmed by her interest, he didn’t show it. Instead, he’d invited her to talk about it more after his shift at the front desk was over, to which she agreed.</p><p>Which was how she ended up having dinner in one of the finer restaurants of the hotel with him as he explained how the hotel worked - at least on the surface level. He was probably intentionally not getting too deep into certain areas. She wouldn’t be surprised.</p><p>She could tell from the way he talked that he was a collected, measured person. And perhaps it was the atmosphere of the refined restaurant and the slow music playing in the background, she found herself more impressed with those traits than she usually thought she would be. An uncomfortable guilt suddenly emerged out of nowhere, and Olivia’s face flashed across her mind for no particular reason. She felt like there were butterflies in her stomach.</p><p>Then she remembered how Snicket once told a story about his friend, a Mr. Sirin, who swallowed actual butterflies into his stomach to prevent the butterflies from being captured and sent to bug prison. They had some discussion about the definition of literally and figuratively afterwards.</p><p>Thinking about discussion of literally and figuratively calmed her down a bit. People sometimes created emotions inside her that she didn’t always know how to explain, but rhetorical devices and grammar always brought her a sense of calmness.</p><p>“Is something wrong?” Frank asked, and at the sound of his voice, all the thoughts about rhetorical devices all went out the window. The odd fluttering feeling returned again, and so did Olivia’s face, her hesitant smiles, her soft eyes, the nice feeling when her fingers brushed across Josephine’s skin. Everything was weird and confusing and the guilt was returning again but she couldn’t even figure out what she felt guilty about.</p><p>“Everything’s fine,” Josephine lied, she refocused again and thought of what to say. “So, the hotel map you gave me last time - did you do all the labelling yourself? It’s quite impressive.”</p><p>He blinked. “It’s - collaborative work between brothers,” he said.</p><p>Later, she would realize the ambiguity of that sentence, and how it could apply to different scenarios with different number of brothers.  For now, she was just glad she thought of something to say to cover up her wandering thoughts. “That’s nice,” she said.</p><p>He observed her with unfathomable eyes.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“I can’t figure out which one you’re in love with,” Gregor said absentmindedly as he gazed at his test tubes and made sure he was filling up whatever liquid he was filling it up with to the correct amount. Josephine frowned, not understanding how he could come to such a conclusion after hearing her stories. They’d been friends for a while now, but she’d never quite understood his way of thinking. She supposed it’s a scientist thing. That’s what his little brother had said, anyway. It made sense.</p><p>“Neither, and I can’t figure out how you came to that weird conclusion,” she informed him. She surveyed his lab curiously, “anyway, tell me about this fungus you mentioned in your research report?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="http://beatricebidelaire.tumblr.com/">come say hi on tumblr</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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